The Year of Magical Thinking

Tags

economic development, foreign policy, Israel, jews, justice, Middle East peace, Palestinians, Trump

A banquet usually comes after the hard work is done — the wedding, finally, after three years of shilly-shallying; the bar mitzvah, after hours of study and no stickball; the treaty, after twenty-four walkouts and twenty-five resets.

And the dessert always comes after the banquet’s main course.

With its 50 billion dollar economic development plan for the Palestinians, but silence on a political plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, America insults the Palestinians with the world’s biggest, most calorie-bloated, hot-fudge sundae.

The Palestinians, who know a thing or two about healthy Mediterranean eating, are not biting.

What good would all that money do for us, they ask, without the political status to assure its lasting benefit?  If you’re filled with ice cream, you may be good for 25 yards, but you’re dead for the marathon.

The Palestinians are not stupid.  They know when they’re being condescended to by a U.S. government that has no stomach for, and apparently no understanding of, the hard work necessary to reach a genuine, mutually-agreed, internationally-supported, durable peace.

Trump tossed away American credibility as a neutral arbiter with his blatant intervention in the Israeli election campaign on Netanyahu’s behalf, first with the move of our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, signaling that Palestinian claims to a share of the Holy City mean nothing, and then with official recognition of Israeli sovereignty over what is still juridically Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, as if American interventionism made international law.

(Netanyahu won’t show it in public, of course, but rumor suggests he still has the image of Trump’s lips on his ass, in hot-fudge.)

It’s fair to ask why one should be upset about this.  After all, America is being consistent with our fundamental moral obligation to support the protection and well-being of a people — the Jews — who have suffered the worst tragedies imaginable.

And, we should not relax our support for Israel simply because, at least for the time being, it now shares a bed with former Sunni Arab enemies, all facing a common foe in Shiite Iran.

But the Palestinian story is not without its tragedies.  And, if our commitment is to justice, they too deserve our support.

Besides being morally defensible, a balanced policy toward Israel and the Palestinians is a matter of practical importance.  The Middle East will be turbulent for decades to come.  If the Israeli-Palestinian issue (which, after all, has been a primary cause of war and discord for more than half a century) can be resolved with justice, at least we will have one fewer conflict to worry about.

At this point, since the Trump administration’s Israel-Palestine policy is still-born (and driven more by its perceived U.S. electoral advantage than its purported benefits to the adversaries themselves), probably the best we can hope for is regime change — here, at home, with ballots, not bullets.

Do the hard work now.  Let the banquet — with a hot-fudge sundae after — be the reward.

Judaism Your Way (Oy Vey)

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Adventure Rabbi, Brian Field, Jamie Korngold, jews, Judaism, Judaism Your Way, Lubavitchers, Menachem Schneerson, orthodox, Passover, rabbis, reform, religion, sabbath, tradition

If, like me, you look at piety the way a little kid with a thumbtack looks at a large balloon, you might find two Colorado rabbis, Jamie Korngold and Brian Field, sympathetic co-conspirators.

Korngold, who calls herself The Adventure Rabbi, and Field, leader of Judaism Your Way, share a similar philosophy: Judaism, as a way of thinking and living, can adapt to the complex demands of modern American life, to the divergent outlooks of today’s Jews, even to the interests and needs of non-Jews, without becoming a baloney sandwich, on white bread, with mayo.

Korngold is the more unconventional of the two. She holds services on ski slopes — Shabbat on Snow — and celebrates major holidays in the wild — Passover at Moab (Utah, i.e.). But, she insists, she’s a traditionalist who just happens to prefer schuss to shul: We teach age-old Jewish concepts like taking some time off each week and stop trying to be perfect, but we teach them in a modern context (leaving enticingly ambiguous whether stopping trying to be perfect or trying to be perfect is the age-old Jewish concept).

Though Field usually gathers his flock within the more conventional four walls, the purpose is inclusive, not exclusive: Meeting people where they are goes back to Abraham and Sarah … They made openings on all four sides of their tent, so travelers could enter in the direction from which they were coming. Wherever you are on your Jewish journey, we’ll meet you there.

Here in Colorado, where the many paths to enlightenment are open all hours, Korngold and Field are a part of the normal landscape. So, too, across a very wide chasm, is the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher movement’s Chabad House, with its emphasis on study of the sacred texts, and strict, on-time observance of every religious obligation.

One can only begin to imagine the apoplexy each side causes the other:

— So, when you profane the Sabbath by driving to the ski slope, allowing men next to women (God forbid the women should shave their heads as pious practice demands), do you at least avoid mixing meat and milk by drinking your coffee black when you have your ham sandwich? Bah!

— So, have you considered that Moses met God on a mountain? And what does hair, or its lack, have to do with piety? Is a bearded man a better man? And what’s the point of a woman’s shaving her head only to replace it with someone else’s hair? Bah!

Montagues and Capulets; Hatfields and McCoys; Cripps and Bloods; Democrats and Republicans.

But, as far apart as they may seem, the Yurveyitchers probably need the Lubavitchers, and vice versa. If Korngold’s and Field’s variations on a theme are to make any rational sense, there has to be a theme, a core of accepted belief and practice, to make variations on. And, if their teachings are to have any spiritual/emotional meaning — this is, after all, religion and not calculus — they need a basis that resonates, whether as myth or historic truth.

From the other side of the chasm, the case for mutual dependence is a little harder. Orthodoxy can say that 5,774 years and counting gives them a bit of an edge. Still, without the challenge of change, senile complacency is always a risk. There’s nothing like the jolt of a skiing rabbi — a WOMAN at that — to send the scholar back to his books to prove why THAT CANNOT BE RIGHT.

Sin and Sincerity

Tags

abortion, Bible, catholics, church of christ, coffee, comfy chair, doing good, faith, faith and works, gays, inquisition, jews, missionaries, mormons, presbyterians, salvation, sin, social gospel, un-comfy chair, unitarians

On my rounds putting up concert posters for my choral group, I regularly stop at local churches, synagogues, and coffee-houses. The coffee-houses win the Warm Welcome Prize hands down, but the Presbyterians, Evangelicals, and Church of Christers are close. The Catholics and Jews are ok — locked doors, but, once inside, the reception is reasonably friendly.

The mightiest fortress is the Unitarians.  You’d think they were guarding our gold supply.  Though it’s just one church, this saddens, but doesn’t surprise me, an erstwhile Unitarian.  Unitarianism is a flinty faith, really no faith at all, since human reason is its Bible and skepticism its catechism.  No dogma, no saints, but also no heretics.  If the Inquisitors had been Unitarians, torture would have been The Un-Comfy Chair.

These are admittedly limited encounters, but could they reflect differing attitudes toward missionizing?  Many Protestants are active missionizers.  They want to save souls, which starts with a smile, a hearty handshake, and a name badge.  Catholics are a little more cautious, perhaps because ethnicity is still an element of the faith (you can convert to Catholicism but not to Irishism or Polishism).  Judaism is staunchly non-missionizing.  Though you can convert, being a Jew is more genealogy than doctrine.  A non-believing Jew is still a Jew.  Ask a Cossack.

Unitarians, too, are non-missionizers.  Not that they wouldn’t, but that they can’t —  no hell to save you from, or heaven to save you for; no Christ to absolve your sins, nor any doctrine of sin from which to absolve you.  This was parodied hilariously in a Prairie Home Companion Joke Show:  What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Seventh-Day-Adventist?  Someone who knocks on people’s doors … for …  no … apparent … reason.

I agree with the Unitarian non-theology that considers God unknowable and Jesus simply a great man.  Still, self-styled intellectual superiority doesn’t excuse the closed door or the smugness that comes with smashing icons. What’s the matter with a little missionary-brand warmth, even if it’s only, Hi and welcome.  I can’t promise you an afterlife of eternal bliss, but how about some heavenly coffee that’ll at least give you a 30-minute buzz.

Though I can’t subscribe to the Biblical God, with or without Jesus Christ, I wouldn’t arbitrarily condemn the faiths founded thereon.  What real difference does it make what you believe, as long as you act rightly?

Take Mormonism, for example.  What little I know about Mormon theology utterly baffles me.  But I have also known and worked with a lot of Mormons, and found them to be good, warm people (though short on the coffee).  Because of?  In spite of?  Who cares?

Religiously-inspired social/political activism is a vital part of doing the right thing.  But here, beyond the simple person-to-person imperatives of being loving and kind, peaceful and generous, the question of acting rightly according to one’s religious lights gets complicated.

If the result is the anti-gay efforts of some Evangelicals, the answer seems simple — whatever the Bible may say, being hateful to those who are causing no harm to anyone is wrong.  If the result is the anti-abortion stance of the Catholic Church, answering the question — Which is the greater act of love and kindness, protecting a mother’s life (in all the meanings of “protection” and “life”) or that of an unborn child? — is anything but simple.  Nonetheless, the criteria are still:  whatever dogma may say, is the deed loving, kind, peaceful, and generous?

Even an unbeliever like me sometimes longs for a Judgment Day, when the sorting would stand, not on whether Jesus saved you or you made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but whether (and to paraphrase a saying my mother stuck on the fridge), you have done something good for someone who will never be able to repay you.  Otherwise, the wages of being non-loving, non-peaceful, and unkind — especially to someone who is in a position to repay you — may be … well, just ask the guy on the right.